Primary Research Group has published Academic Library Cataloging Practices 
Benchmarks (ISBN 1-57440-106-8). This 254 page report presents data from a 
survey of the cataloging practices of approximately 80 North American 
academic libraries. In more than 630 tables of data and related commentary 
from participating librarians and our analysts, the report gives a broad 
overview of academic library cataloging practices related to outsourcing, 
selection and deployment of personnel, salaries, the state of continuing 
education in cataloging, and much more. Survey participants also discuss how 
they define the catalogers’ range of responsibilities, how they train their 
catalogers, how they assess cataloging quality, whether they use cataloging 
quotas or other measures to spur productivity, what software and other 
cataloging technology they use and why, and how they make outsourcing 
decisions and more. Data is broken out by size and type of college and for 
public and private colleges.

Just a few of the reports many findings are presented below:

•	More than 70% of the libraries in the sample say that their 
catalogers have salary levels that are comparable to those of public service 
librarians at their institutions.

•	About 27.3% of the survey participants routinely use 
paraprofessional staff for original cataloging. Public colleges were more than 
three times more likely than private colleges to use paraprofessionals for 
original cataloging, and larger colleges were more than twice as likely as 
smaller ones to do so.

•	41.56% of the libraries in the sample outsource authority control, 
obtaining new and updated authority records.

•	About 15.6% of the libraries in the sample outsource the cataloging 
of e-journals; close to 28% of research universities do so.

•	20.78% of libraries in the sample use MarcEdit or other MARC editor 
to preview records and globally edit to local standards prior to loading.  

•	29.7% of the libraries in the sample have technical services areas 
that track turnaround time from Acquisitions receipt to Cataloging to shelf-
ready distribution.

•	About 24.7% of the libraries in the sample use paraprofessional 
support staff for master bibliographic record enrichment in OCLC. Most of 
those doing so were public colleges and offered beyond the B.A. degree.

•	Authority control experience was considered a very important 
criterion for hiring by only 8.11% of survey participants, while a bit more than 
35% considered it important. 21.62% considered authority control experience 
not so important as a hiring criterion.

•	The mean number of librarians in mostly cataloging functions that are 
likely to retire over the next five years was a mean of only 0.27.  The figure 
was nearly 0.6 for colleges with more than 10,000 students.  

•	Only 11.27% of survey participants said that recent hires were well 
prepared in subject genre/thesauri systems, and close to 24% said that they 
were prepared. 

For further information go to our website at www.PrimaryResearch.com.